Dear family,
We just watched Prince of Egypt as a Zone. It was a lot of fun. Prince of Egypt is the only cartoon I'll allow myself to watch - while President Van Dam is happy to allow us to watch other films such as Mulan, Aladdin, The Lion King etc, I myself feel I'd rather avoid such films - even though there's nothing wrong to them, I can't help but feel that such films would distract me. Prince of Egypt is okay by my standards because it's still church-related. It actually gave me a lot of insight into prophets and how God leads and teaches His people, as I thought about the imagery and symbolism He used in calling Moses, his preparation and the miracles that were performed. It's been a long time since I watched the film, and one thing I really noticed about watching it this time is just how much the filmmakers didn't understand about the full story; truths we only have through the Restored Gospel.
The Zone here in Macau is rather small. There are 12 of us, split into two Districts; the Zone Leaders and a Sister companionship are in my District, with my companion Elder Liu, which is a Chinese-speaking District. The other District is International, which contains the District Leader and his companion, a Sister companionship and a Senior couple, the Kaps, who are really amazing. Elder Kap is the International Branch President, and they proseltye as well!
Elder Liu, my current companion, is ABC (American Born Chinese) from Sandy, Utah. He's been out on his mission for almost a year and his Chinese is really good (as is the case with most ABCs in the Mission, as they normally heard it growing up to some extent). He is a really hard working missionary, and I'm glad to be serving with him. He's taught me a lot about hard work, and I can see the success he's been having as he serves here. This is only his second area - his first area, which he was in for 6 months, was West Point, which was also my first area. We have a lot of fun together, and have been seeing a lot of miracles as we help prepare investigators for baptism - we currently have five with dates, and one will be baptized this Sunday (in fact, we'll be having his baptismal interview in a few hours).
You can tell the Elders that actually, dinner appointments (or "cheng outs" as we call them in Chenglish) here are rather rare. Members are normally no less busy than non-Members, and certainly here in Macau the branch is not strong enough to support a meal for every day. Tell the Elders that they should count themselves lucky and enjoy the experience.
You can also tell people who ask that I've varied my eating a lot now. I now eat instant noodles very rarely if ever (it's been a long time since I last ate any). Back in Tai Po, I would cook a range of things - making my own curries was fun and rather easy; or perhaps frying up some Chicken breasts with a Chinese stir-fry mix. A while ago Sister Van Dam told us all to eat more healthily and to get more vegetables into our diet. I wasn't all that sure how, so I requested a Mission cookbook, and so now we all have a variety of recipes to choose from when cooking. All of the missionaries submitted their favourite easy recipes that can be cooked in Missionary apartments (as we don't have things like ovens). I submitted the old classic; Beans on Toast.
Elder Ng didn't serve in Macau. President Van Dam only found out recently that Europeans get such priviliges. The Zone has four nationalities at the moment; most are from America, but there is also Sister Au and Elder Woo from Hong Kong and Sister Mansader, from the Philippines. Plus myself, we add up to probably one of the most varied Zones in the Mission, as well as the smallest.
On Tuesday we got on the boat to go back to Hong Kong for a leadership meeting with all of the District Leaders and Zone Leaders. It was fun; staying in Patron Housing opposite the Temple and seeing all of my friends who are in leadership positions in the Mission. We'll be going back across again next week for Mission Tour, when Elder Watson of the Seventy will come and speak to us. Then I won't be back in Hong Kong for over a month, until next Mission Conference.
I'm pretty certain that you can get a cheaper Millennium Falcon than £345. Knowing how Lego's done things before, that would be the super-duper amazing model that will take weeks to build. If you search around the internet, you might be able to find the old, cheaper model from back a while ago. You can find anything on the internet. Just don't buy second hand - that doesn't sound very safe to me when it comes to hundreds of little tiny bricks when even just one missing ruins the whole thing.
It turns out that I can actually be in Macau for an entire year without any problems, but President Van Dam didn't seem to be expecting to keep me here for the rest of my mission. We had a nice interview after the leadership meeting - because of travel costs and for convenience, President Van Dam has our interviews on the few days every Moves that we are in Hong Kong. We talked a little about Christlike Attributes, which is our Mission focus this move. He asked me which attribute I'm working on this Move and I told him Charity and Love, because I don't feel that I give enough of myself. He told me just how amazing it was that here I am, only 20 years old, and we were having such an adult, grown up conversation about how to serve.
I will find out what the Macau English Class is like later today, as we will teach it. Back in West Point, we had several rowdy kids who wouldn't sit still at all. I gained a lot of respect for you, Mum, and how you manage to keep thirty of them under control at once, when we could barely manage a handful.
Cornwall sounds like fun - please take a lot of pictures and send them to me! I'll do the same in return, although I've been kid of stingy with my camera recently so I haven't taken very many since the CD I sent you via Elder Ng.
I love you all and I hope you're all happy, despite workloads. You're all in my prayers.
Elder Matthew Loffhagen
羅 長 老
Thursday, 23 October 2008
Not in Hong Kong anymore - 1st email from Macau
Hi all,
I'm emailing right now from a little email place down a side-street in Macau, which will be my new home for the next six months. Macau is a nice little Portuguese colony a fair way from Hong Kong, and because of the difficulties in obtaining Visas for a lot of the missionaries, the usual stay period is six months. Being a European Union citizen, however, I have a little bit of an advantage over the American Elders and Sisters; as I entered Macau the immigrations official stamped my passport for a six month stay, as Europeans are allowed to stay quite a bit longer than Americans.
It's an interesting place; I haven't seen very much of it yet, but it seems to me to be a cross between Portugal and Hong Kong. It's mostly known for its casinos and leisure facilities, so the whole place has a real sea-side feel to it. It should be a lot of fun.
It was kind of hard saying goodbye to a lot of the members back in Tai Po. I'd been there for seven and a half months, so I'd certainly gotten to know them rather well. Brother S seemed to be after coming to visit me out here, which I told him it was best not to do. Hopefully he'll listen - the last thing I want is a former gambling addict strolling around in the Casinos... Nothing to worry about though, he's a good man.
In order to make the trek across the sea, I decided that it was time I invested in a slightly larger suitcase; The big one is fine, but the tiny little one was just too small to hold all of my stuff. So I went and bought a new one for 175 Hong Kong Dollars. I was somewhat apprehensive about buying it, because the wheels looked rather flimsy, but one the same size with sturdier wheels was $210. I made the wrong choice; on the way from the ferry to the flat here in Macau, both wheels snapped off and I had to drag it the last leg of the journey. So well done, Elder Loffhagen - I bought a useless suitcase. At least I won't need it again for a long time.
I wouldn't be so sure that a mission would be rest - bedtimes are subject to sudden change. Here in the Hong Kong mission, for example, instead of following the normal schedule of 6:30am to 10:30pm, we get up at 7:00am and go to bed at 11:00pm. This, I've felt, has been a lot easier than getting up at 6:30, as I'm certainly not a morning person. But apparently, in Macau, we're a half an hour later still, getting up at 7:30 and going to bed at 11:30. This should be nice too, but today we went to Seminary in the morning. So I got up at 6:00 and will go to bed at 11:30. So I'm not sure if a mission will be any more relaxing than a screaming group of children all day.
Especially when we teach English Class...
Anyway, thank you for loving Steve. I'm sure it means a lot to him that he has you all. We all need friends, especially church friends.
You guessed pretty much accurately as to my reason for being kind of quiet with Sister Dawson. Girls are so terrifying to me now (not that they weren't before, but it's a different kind of terror) and I kind of like to keep my distance. I will say something of Sister Dawson though - her Chinese is amazingly good. And why not? Apparently she learned Mandarin before her mission, used to live in Hong Kong and - best of all - her boyfriend also served here in Hong Kong. That's an interesting twist. So yes, I haven't yet served around her (nor will I for the moment - Macau only has 4 sister missionaries, and all are going to be here for a while longer yet) nor do I go out of my way to talk to her at mission events, but she's around and doing very well.
General Conference was amazing; I really enjoyed it. When I go home, I do look forward to going to the church all weekend and watching it with all the members. It's a much better experience than just sitting on the couch at home looking at the tiny computer monitor. I really learned a lot and was glad to have the chance to watch it. Apparently, here in Macau they have General Conference two weeks later than the rest of the world, so they'll be watching it this coming Saturday and Sunday. We probably won't be watching much of it with them, though. The Elders and Sisters who were here already got the chance to watch it this past week.
Keep up the hard work, Mum and Dad. It sounds like both of you are doing really well. I love you for it. I hope that school gets quieter and that counselling goes without too many hitches. You two are both my heroes.
Good to hear that things are good financially for the family, if not the world. When I heard about the huge problems that are going on, I was somewhat worried for any savings that may be floating on the stock market, but I'm sure you're all on top of things, and that God will provide.
I've been thinking about Christmas and a few things I would like. As it stands at the moment, presents will need to be sent early on if I have any hope of actually getting them in time for Christmas, as they'll go to the mission home, and because the ferry between Hong Kong and Macau is around $150 a time, we don't go back there very often. I've been thinking I'd like to get some contact lenses, because my glasses are becoming more and more of an annoyance, and I don't think they'd be too badly priced if I bought them here - pretty much all Chinese people have poor eyesight, so they have some good, cheap options. I'll find out more about that and let you know later. As far as other little things go, I'd really like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: Called to Serve CD and refills for my coloured scripture marking pencil, both of which can probably be found at the LDS bookshop near the Temple. A Portuguese to English dictionary might be nice too, but I'll see what I can do about that myself first.
I love you all. You are always in my prayers. Keep working hard.
Love,
Elder Matthew Loffhagen
羅 長 老
I'm emailing right now from a little email place down a side-street in Macau, which will be my new home for the next six months. Macau is a nice little Portuguese colony a fair way from Hong Kong, and because of the difficulties in obtaining Visas for a lot of the missionaries, the usual stay period is six months. Being a European Union citizen, however, I have a little bit of an advantage over the American Elders and Sisters; as I entered Macau the immigrations official stamped my passport for a six month stay, as Europeans are allowed to stay quite a bit longer than Americans.
It's an interesting place; I haven't seen very much of it yet, but it seems to me to be a cross between Portugal and Hong Kong. It's mostly known for its casinos and leisure facilities, so the whole place has a real sea-side feel to it. It should be a lot of fun.
It was kind of hard saying goodbye to a lot of the members back in Tai Po. I'd been there for seven and a half months, so I'd certainly gotten to know them rather well. Brother S seemed to be after coming to visit me out here, which I told him it was best not to do. Hopefully he'll listen - the last thing I want is a former gambling addict strolling around in the Casinos... Nothing to worry about though, he's a good man.
In order to make the trek across the sea, I decided that it was time I invested in a slightly larger suitcase; The big one is fine, but the tiny little one was just too small to hold all of my stuff. So I went and bought a new one for 175 Hong Kong Dollars. I was somewhat apprehensive about buying it, because the wheels looked rather flimsy, but one the same size with sturdier wheels was $210. I made the wrong choice; on the way from the ferry to the flat here in Macau, both wheels snapped off and I had to drag it the last leg of the journey. So well done, Elder Loffhagen - I bought a useless suitcase. At least I won't need it again for a long time.
I wouldn't be so sure that a mission would be rest - bedtimes are subject to sudden change. Here in the Hong Kong mission, for example, instead of following the normal schedule of 6:30am to 10:30pm, we get up at 7:00am and go to bed at 11:00pm. This, I've felt, has been a lot easier than getting up at 6:30, as I'm certainly not a morning person. But apparently, in Macau, we're a half an hour later still, getting up at 7:30 and going to bed at 11:30. This should be nice too, but today we went to Seminary in the morning. So I got up at 6:00 and will go to bed at 11:30. So I'm not sure if a mission will be any more relaxing than a screaming group of children all day.
Especially when we teach English Class...
Anyway, thank you for loving Steve. I'm sure it means a lot to him that he has you all. We all need friends, especially church friends.
You guessed pretty much accurately as to my reason for being kind of quiet with Sister Dawson. Girls are so terrifying to me now (not that they weren't before, but it's a different kind of terror) and I kind of like to keep my distance. I will say something of Sister Dawson though - her Chinese is amazingly good. And why not? Apparently she learned Mandarin before her mission, used to live in Hong Kong and - best of all - her boyfriend also served here in Hong Kong. That's an interesting twist. So yes, I haven't yet served around her (nor will I for the moment - Macau only has 4 sister missionaries, and all are going to be here for a while longer yet) nor do I go out of my way to talk to her at mission events, but she's around and doing very well.
General Conference was amazing; I really enjoyed it. When I go home, I do look forward to going to the church all weekend and watching it with all the members. It's a much better experience than just sitting on the couch at home looking at the tiny computer monitor. I really learned a lot and was glad to have the chance to watch it. Apparently, here in Macau they have General Conference two weeks later than the rest of the world, so they'll be watching it this coming Saturday and Sunday. We probably won't be watching much of it with them, though. The Elders and Sisters who were here already got the chance to watch it this past week.
Keep up the hard work, Mum and Dad. It sounds like both of you are doing really well. I love you for it. I hope that school gets quieter and that counselling goes without too many hitches. You two are both my heroes.
Good to hear that things are good financially for the family, if not the world. When I heard about the huge problems that are going on, I was somewhat worried for any savings that may be floating on the stock market, but I'm sure you're all on top of things, and that God will provide.
I've been thinking about Christmas and a few things I would like. As it stands at the moment, presents will need to be sent early on if I have any hope of actually getting them in time for Christmas, as they'll go to the mission home, and because the ferry between Hong Kong and Macau is around $150 a time, we don't go back there very often. I've been thinking I'd like to get some contact lenses, because my glasses are becoming more and more of an annoyance, and I don't think they'd be too badly priced if I bought them here - pretty much all Chinese people have poor eyesight, so they have some good, cheap options. I'll find out more about that and let you know later. As far as other little things go, I'd really like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: Called to Serve CD and refills for my coloured scripture marking pencil, both of which can probably be found at the LDS bookshop near the Temple. A Portuguese to English dictionary might be nice too, but I'll see what I can do about that myself first.
I love you all. You are always in my prayers. Keep working hard.
Love,
Elder Matthew Loffhagen
羅 長 老
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Mainlander Barbecue et al - 52nd email from Hong Kong
Dear all,
Certainly the most eventful thing this week was a ward activity we had on Tuesday. Normally on Tuesday we have a ward Family Home Evening which is organized by our ward mission correllator and his family as an excellent activity for our investigators, recent converts and less-active members. But this Tuesday was a national holiday - it was the Ghost Festival here in Asia. I have seen two of these holidays now and have as of yet to see a single ghost, or anything remotely like a decoration or celebration. Supposedly all of the celebrations happen at graveyards, so we haven't seen much of them.
Anyway, our ward's Seminary teacher, Sister L W, is an amazing Sister, and an amazing member missionary. She's teaching at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, and she has been teaching Cantonese to a bunch of Mainlanders who only speak Mandarin. She decided that it would be fun to have a nice fun activity all together; the ward and the students, and invite the missionaries to come and, well, teach preach and baptize. With a lot of people from the Mainland, it really is that easy. As I've said before, they come down in droves to hear the Gospel without even much of anything about the church.
We invited the Mandarin Missionaries as well - a good idea, as the students have only been learning Cantonese for a month or so. Still, some of their Cantonese was pretty much spot on already. Others struggled and sounded a little MTCish. It was very strange being on the other side of a conversation I normally have regularly; "Your Cantonese is so good! How long have you been learning for? Wow! You've learned to fast! Amazing!" The more Chinese I learn, the more surprised people seem to get that I've been learning for only a little more than a year. On Tuesday, roles were reversed and I found myself having better Chinese than most people there. Most of them could at least Sik Teng (understand) pretty well, even if they couldn't quite Sik Gong (speak) yet. It's an interesting principle of language learning I've discovered - if two languages are similar enough, you can speak back and forth in the two of them without knowing the other person's language very well, but still understanding what he says.
Most Mandarin is still a mystery to me, but every now and then I Sik Teng'ed a word or two. If I got really stuck, I got them to write down the word they were saying, because characters are the same in both languages (well, mostly - there is that pesky simplified that makes things harder) and I could read enough characters to figure it out.
It was a really scary experience, though - a little step outside of missionary work. I wore jeans for the first time in almost a year, and could been me slipping back into pre-mission mode just a little simply from wearing more rough and tumble clothes that would afford to be torn a little. In fact, all of the members also thought that it was really weird to see me in jeans. But the bunch of Mainlanders didn't have any idea what Missionaries did or what we normally look like, so we were just cool white people to them. Therein lied the biggest problem - it would have been very easy to forget that I was a missionary and we weren't just a bunch of YSA out on an activity.
I can see how the adjustment to life at home might be tricky. But I'll worry about that when I get that far.
I shall have to write Elder Crowther and ask him what on earth they were thinking having him drive? Did they get him his full license or was he still on his Provisional? I'm rather glad I don't have to worry about that here, as only the Office Staff get to drive. The thing is that they all have to drive big huge vans, because they're normally only used for carting around luggage and furniture.
Anyway, I love you all lots. Talk to you soon.
Elder Matthew Loffhagen
羅 長 老
Certainly the most eventful thing this week was a ward activity we had on Tuesday. Normally on Tuesday we have a ward Family Home Evening which is organized by our ward mission correllator and his family as an excellent activity for our investigators, recent converts and less-active members. But this Tuesday was a national holiday - it was the Ghost Festival here in Asia. I have seen two of these holidays now and have as of yet to see a single ghost, or anything remotely like a decoration or celebration. Supposedly all of the celebrations happen at graveyards, so we haven't seen much of them.
Anyway, our ward's Seminary teacher, Sister L W, is an amazing Sister, and an amazing member missionary. She's teaching at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, and she has been teaching Cantonese to a bunch of Mainlanders who only speak Mandarin. She decided that it would be fun to have a nice fun activity all together; the ward and the students, and invite the missionaries to come and, well, teach preach and baptize. With a lot of people from the Mainland, it really is that easy. As I've said before, they come down in droves to hear the Gospel without even much of anything about the church.
We invited the Mandarin Missionaries as well - a good idea, as the students have only been learning Cantonese for a month or so. Still, some of their Cantonese was pretty much spot on already. Others struggled and sounded a little MTCish. It was very strange being on the other side of a conversation I normally have regularly; "Your Cantonese is so good! How long have you been learning for? Wow! You've learned to fast! Amazing!" The more Chinese I learn, the more surprised people seem to get that I've been learning for only a little more than a year. On Tuesday, roles were reversed and I found myself having better Chinese than most people there. Most of them could at least Sik Teng (understand) pretty well, even if they couldn't quite Sik Gong (speak) yet. It's an interesting principle of language learning I've discovered - if two languages are similar enough, you can speak back and forth in the two of them without knowing the other person's language very well, but still understanding what he says.
Most Mandarin is still a mystery to me, but every now and then I Sik Teng'ed a word or two. If I got really stuck, I got them to write down the word they were saying, because characters are the same in both languages (well, mostly - there is that pesky simplified that makes things harder) and I could read enough characters to figure it out.
It was a really scary experience, though - a little step outside of missionary work. I wore jeans for the first time in almost a year, and could been me slipping back into pre-mission mode just a little simply from wearing more rough and tumble clothes that would afford to be torn a little. In fact, all of the members also thought that it was really weird to see me in jeans. But the bunch of Mainlanders didn't have any idea what Missionaries did or what we normally look like, so we were just cool white people to them. Therein lied the biggest problem - it would have been very easy to forget that I was a missionary and we weren't just a bunch of YSA out on an activity.
I can see how the adjustment to life at home might be tricky. But I'll worry about that when I get that far.
I shall have to write Elder Crowther and ask him what on earth they were thinking having him drive? Did they get him his full license or was he still on his Provisional? I'm rather glad I don't have to worry about that here, as only the Office Staff get to drive. The thing is that they all have to drive big huge vans, because they're normally only used for carting around luggage and furniture.
Anyway, I love you all lots. Talk to you soon.
Elder Matthew Loffhagen
羅 長 老
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Monkey Mountain and other adventures - 51st email from Hong Kong
Dear all,
Thank you for a wonderful email this week. I got a lot of messages this week - one from an Elder from our MTC group who went home early, one from Tim and one from the bank, telling me how much money I had this time last week. Good good.
So we just got back from Monkey Mountain. It does exactly what it says on the tin - there are monkeys, on a mountain. It was a Zone activity, we all went up there and played some games together and saw some wild monkeys. That was fun. They get pretty close, but you have to be careful because some are really mean, and judging from how much they were all scratching, they all probably had fleas. But either way, it was a real "Wish Tim Were Here" moment.
This week has been a good one. We've had a lot of exchanges. One of the responsibilities of a District Leader is to go on exchanges with the members of his district and give a little training, so I've been off with Elder Forney and Elder Chugg this week. Next week is Elder Nelson and Elder Hedin.
There's a great range of missionaries in our District. Elder Nelson is brand new, being trained by Elder Forney who is a little younger than I am (younger in a missionary sense - he's actually a convert, and currently 22). Elder Chugg has been in the field for about 6 months now but spent almost all of it in Macau, which is, from what I've heard, nothing like Hong Kong. Elder Hedin used to be the Assistant to the President and goes home in two weeks. Plus we have two Sisters; Sister Oler is in her second Move and Sister Opie was in my younger group at the MTC. Oler and Opie are far too easy to get mixed up, so I'll normally try and call them by their Chinese names of Lau and Dang. I had a pretty hard time last Moves living with Elder Bagley and Elder Forney; they were far too close for me to remember one from the other.
Sister Turney's story is very moving. I can imagine how hard Sister Missionaries on Temple Square with only a short period of proselyting must have it. If you don't have something amazing happen in that short period of time, you may not get to see the effects of your service. But I think that they're amazing, and their hard work really does help people. A sister who served in the Oakland California Temple Visitors Centre came home from her mission a few months ago and she and her boyfriend (who as a Hong Kong native who was called here speaking Mandarin, and then was Assistant to the President, is somewhat legendary) had us over for dinner. You could tell that she was really mission trunky (as in she wanted to pack her trunk again and go back) and was so thrilled to have serve. She told us stories of how her proselyting area was a very rich, built up area and it was very hard to find investigators, so the ward organized a lot of activities, like plays, to generate interest and get people to the church.
Last Monday, I went to Seminary here in Tai Po. When I was on exchanges with Elder Forney, we felt impressed to invite two less actives we were teaching to come to Seminary. So we promised we'd go too, and it had a good old familiar Seminary feel. Early morning, tiredness, lights out so as not to wake up the others who were still sleeping. The thing that made it nice was that it wasn't really, really cold. That was the hardest thing about Seminary back home.
Typhoons here are not that big of a deal. Tai Po is really sheltered, so if it's really bad on Hong Kong Island, it doesn't really affect us very much. We live on the first floor of a big giant cement building, so we're not in danger at all. the frustrating thing is when a typhoon hits and we have to stay inside for the day, but that's all it comes down to; nothing too worrying here. Hong Kong is very safe in many ways; good protection against the violent weather, almost no crime and a very well worked out pedestrian system. I'm not sure about England (I never really thought about it) but here it's illegal to cross the road at a zebra crossing if the little man is red (Is that a zebra crossing? I can't remember). So while most Chinese people break the rules and cross with reckless abandon, we stick to only crossing when it's green.
The problem is, nearly every crossing in Hong Kong is a Zebra crossing, so you always have to wait for the light.
Anyway, time's almost up. I love you all lots and lots and will continue to pray for you all.
Elder Matthew Loffhagen
羅 長 老
Thank you for a wonderful email this week. I got a lot of messages this week - one from an Elder from our MTC group who went home early, one from Tim and one from the bank, telling me how much money I had this time last week. Good good.
So we just got back from Monkey Mountain. It does exactly what it says on the tin - there are monkeys, on a mountain. It was a Zone activity, we all went up there and played some games together and saw some wild monkeys. That was fun. They get pretty close, but you have to be careful because some are really mean, and judging from how much they were all scratching, they all probably had fleas. But either way, it was a real "Wish Tim Were Here" moment.
This week has been a good one. We've had a lot of exchanges. One of the responsibilities of a District Leader is to go on exchanges with the members of his district and give a little training, so I've been off with Elder Forney and Elder Chugg this week. Next week is Elder Nelson and Elder Hedin.
There's a great range of missionaries in our District. Elder Nelson is brand new, being trained by Elder Forney who is a little younger than I am (younger in a missionary sense - he's actually a convert, and currently 22). Elder Chugg has been in the field for about 6 months now but spent almost all of it in Macau, which is, from what I've heard, nothing like Hong Kong. Elder Hedin used to be the Assistant to the President and goes home in two weeks. Plus we have two Sisters; Sister Oler is in her second Move and Sister Opie was in my younger group at the MTC. Oler and Opie are far too easy to get mixed up, so I'll normally try and call them by their Chinese names of Lau and Dang. I had a pretty hard time last Moves living with Elder Bagley and Elder Forney; they were far too close for me to remember one from the other.
Sister Turney's story is very moving. I can imagine how hard Sister Missionaries on Temple Square with only a short period of proselyting must have it. If you don't have something amazing happen in that short period of time, you may not get to see the effects of your service. But I think that they're amazing, and their hard work really does help people. A sister who served in the Oakland California Temple Visitors Centre came home from her mission a few months ago and she and her boyfriend (who as a Hong Kong native who was called here speaking Mandarin, and then was Assistant to the President, is somewhat legendary) had us over for dinner. You could tell that she was really mission trunky (as in she wanted to pack her trunk again and go back) and was so thrilled to have serve. She told us stories of how her proselyting area was a very rich, built up area and it was very hard to find investigators, so the ward organized a lot of activities, like plays, to generate interest and get people to the church.
Last Monday, I went to Seminary here in Tai Po. When I was on exchanges with Elder Forney, we felt impressed to invite two less actives we were teaching to come to Seminary. So we promised we'd go too, and it had a good old familiar Seminary feel. Early morning, tiredness, lights out so as not to wake up the others who were still sleeping. The thing that made it nice was that it wasn't really, really cold. That was the hardest thing about Seminary back home.
Typhoons here are not that big of a deal. Tai Po is really sheltered, so if it's really bad on Hong Kong Island, it doesn't really affect us very much. We live on the first floor of a big giant cement building, so we're not in danger at all. the frustrating thing is when a typhoon hits and we have to stay inside for the day, but that's all it comes down to; nothing too worrying here. Hong Kong is very safe in many ways; good protection against the violent weather, almost no crime and a very well worked out pedestrian system. I'm not sure about England (I never really thought about it) but here it's illegal to cross the road at a zebra crossing if the little man is red (Is that a zebra crossing? I can't remember). So while most Chinese people break the rules and cross with reckless abandon, we stick to only crossing when it's green.
The problem is, nearly every crossing in Hong Kong is a Zebra crossing, so you always have to wait for the light.
Anyway, time's almost up. I love you all lots and lots and will continue to pray for you all.
Elder Matthew Loffhagen
羅 長 老
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
